Hoboken city official responds to rumors on local blog

Hoboken city official responds to rumors on local blogMay 19, 2011 - Jersey Journal

There are rumors floating around City Hall again – and this time the FBI is involved.

Local blog Hoboken411.com posted information this morning that allege Mayor Zimmer is trying to hide information contained in email correspondence from two aides, Juan Melli and Dan Bryan.

There are allegations that the Zimmer aides used their positions in the office to direct Zimmer’s political activities with the press and other local blogs.

“A massive email dump was underway to hide evidence of wrongdoing,” said the bloggers.

According to the blog, the door to the city’s Department of Information Technology was padlocked yesterday. The blog said it’s possible that Zimmer brought in IT professionals from Albany that worked for this year's council campaigns to check out the city’s servers. But it also claimed that the FBI could have come to claim the city’s computers.

A Hoboken city official said the rumors are false and irresponsible and have no relevance to current investigations being done at the office.

“Council president Mason calling for an investigation into the emails of Juan Melli and Daniel Bryan has absolutely nothing to do with current investigations being conducted by outside agencies,” said Mellissa Longo, first assistant to the corporation counsel.

Longo said she could not comment on the ongoing investigation, but mentioned that it was related to an outstanding criminal investigation.

The City Council went into an emergency closed-session to start off their meeting last night.

Corporation counsel Mark Tabakin said it was related to a personnel issue, but no further details surfaced.